


Small Fire

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, an herbal, and sort of a fairy tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:23:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s  thirty-eight years old when he meets a truth-sayer. </p>
<p>Sherlock sets a flame to his lower back, to the lumbar, at the top of the sacrum where the breath lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Fire

**Author's Note:**

> For [ Moranion](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Moranion/pseuds/Moranion)\-- thank you for the inspiration, the yellow flower and the name. Thank you, [ scienceofobsession](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ScienceofObsession/pseuds/ScienceofObsession), for making me think about invocation.

 

He’s thirty-eight years old when he meets a truth-sayer.  
  
He's different; he came out of the desert believing but he didn't think it would look like this. He expected to die before it happened.  
  
But Sherlock sets a flame to his lower back, to the lumbar, at the top of the sacrum where the breath lives, and they run and they run and the fire rises and the past’s gone.  
  
 *****  
**

They live together in a cave full of occiputs and longbones, crouch together over the hot stones and mine clues and dig holes and tell stories and live.

Sherlock gathers. He hunts.They both kill.

He's useful. Good with a sharp stick, with a rock, with a spear, with his bare hands:

Eyebright for a chill.

Yarrow for a fever.

Calendula, the fire of healing, burns under the earth until you gather it, salve it. Heals wounds.

Willow, that's for sorrow; no, anodyne, thins the blood, if it needs thinning.

*******

_“Ognjič,”_ Sherlock says, “is your true name, or one of them.”

No-one’s called him that for a very long time.

“I didn’t think…” John says.

“Don’t think then,” says Sherlock.

Black as the mandrake —your hair, not your heart.  

White as the willow-- your heart, not your tongue.

*******

The wound’s fatal; he knows when he sees Sherlock’s side open where it can’t be closed, but he came out of the desert with the fire of healing,with the faith that pulls a voice out of the hot earth--

_Which do you choose, his heart or his life?_

_Which do you choose, his life or his heart?_   
  
*****  
**

Sherlock lives, but not for long.

He chooses death for himself, but it can’t be his choice.  

John’s wept at the burial place over the wrong answer.

He’s nearly forty when he cuts the willow and the yellow flower, goes home to the stones, goes home to the bones, lights the torch,speaks the words, bows his head, speaks the words, calls out to the earth for the breath and the flame.

**Author's Note:**

> [Calendula and its herbal uses](http://www.3morganic.com/herbs_Details.aspx?News_ID=40)  
>  ognjič. : Slovenian, “small fire” (archaic)-- Calendula  
> Calendula: Latin,“little clock”,” little calendar.” Also known as herbal militaris, thousand-leaf, thousand-seal, sanguinary, marigold, and soldier’s woundwort.


End file.
